13 Decks for MTG Arena’s Festival of the Fae Standard Artisan Event

Right now there’s a special Standard event on Magic Arena: the Festival of the Fae where you can win a bunch of promo versions of some of the standard’s most-played adventure cards.

The rules are simple: build a Standard deck consisting of only commons and uncommons and battle other opponents in a best-of-1 format. There are 4 banned cards: Persistent Petitioners, Cauldron Familiar, Cavalcade of Calamity and Gates Ablaze. The format lasts only a few days, through Nov. 6.

Finally, a format where Oko isn’t legal? Sign me up! I thought the format was fun enough that I spent a good amount of time brewing various decks and running them through the event. There is no win or loss limit, and once you enter the event you can keep playing for as long as you want even if you have already cleared all the rewards. This reminds me of Pauper, but given that the pool of cards on Arena is not that large yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a similar format in the future as a fixture.

One thing to keep in mind when approaching this format is that the mana isn’t great if you want to play two colors, as the only real dual lands are Guildgates, the “lifegain” lands and Evolving Wilds. There is also Tournament Grounds, but there really aren’t that many Knights and it doesn’t let you cast the adventure part of the card.

These decks might also be worth looking at if you are building Standard decks on a budget or don’t have enough Wild cards to get the rares and Mythics.

Unsurprisingly enough, the first deck I built was Mono-Red and it was a quick run through the event with a score of 5-1. It probably took less than 20 minutes, so if your goal is to get the promo versions of the cards, this is a deck that I would recommend. I thought it ran very smoothly and the only other card I was really considering was Goblin Banneret. You can also make a more burn heavy version centered around Electrostatic Field.

Afterwards, I decided to have a little bit more fun and build something more interesting. The next deck I tried was Reanimator, which has a lot of available synergistic cards. Blood for Bones and Bond of Revival let you return anything from your graveyard into play and you can discard anything from your hand with Tomebound Lich or Kasmina. Merfolk Secretkeeper, Discovery/Dispersal and Thought Erasure are more ways to help you get a big creature into your graveyard. The only problem is, once you take the rares and mythics out of the equation, creatures get a lot less powerful. Howling Giant is as best as it gets and there is also one Meteor Golem in case you need to get rid of a problematic noncreature permanent. You can play red instead of blue for Thrill of Possibility and Honor the God-Pharaoh, but Kasmina, Tomebound Lich and Thought Erasure seem better.

Simic Flash has almost everything available from its regular version, except for Nightpack Ambusher and Brazen Borrower. It is a big loss, but remember that other decks are missing cards too. This deck is much better against control and midrange decks than aggro. Faerie Duelist is a pseudo-removal spell against the early drops from the fast decks. It looks like this deck might be better off just being mono-blue, but Frilled Mystic is one of my favorite cards and I love me some value.

I kept playing against a lot of aggro decks, so the next deck I built was Dimir Control that takes advantage of Cry of the Carnarium, one of the few sweepers in the format. The idea here is to blank your opponent’s removal while playing plenty of it yourself. Nightveil Predator is a nice finisher that I believe only dies to Liliana’s Triumph.

If you prefer creatures over planeswalkers, you can give this a try, but it’s going to be much worse against removal.

I really liked the idea of curving out Wildwood Tracker into Barkhide Troll, but after that the options aren’t as hot if you want to keep the deck mono-green. I couldn’t find enough aggro cards (you would kill for a Yorvo here), so I went with a little bit of a proliferate subtheme.

The Golgari deck is more about value and there are a ton of ways to build it, including an adventure version with Edgewall Innkeeper. There are some nice little combos here, including an essentially unkillable Molderhulk + Witch’s Cottage.

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About The Author

Martin is considered one of the top players in the world and a rare Limited specialist, with multiple Grand Prix Top 8s and wins to show for it. His busy travel schedule has him attending most Grands Prix worldwide, and he brings an international perspective on preparation to Team ChannelFireball.